


amuse-bouche

by confused_android



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Thanksgiving, and it all ends up great!, but in tiny and non-serious ways, everyone screws up, friendship feels, incredible, is this the shortest fic I've ever written?, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27735169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confused_android/pseuds/confused_android
Summary: The smoke detector goes off when Todd is in the shower."Shit," he curses, fumbling for the faucet. There's still conditioner in his hair and soap running down his chest, but he doesn't want to let the apartment catch fire just to rinse off. He snags the towel on the way out the bathroom door, and slides into the kitchen.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	amuse-bouche

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in two hours after Thanksgiving dinner, and I am now tired and full and ready to fall asleep. This work is entirely un-beta'd.

The smoke detector goes off when Todd is in the shower.

"Shit," he curses, fumbling for the faucet. There's still conditioner in his hair and soap running down his chest, but he doesn't want to let the apartment catch fire just to rinse off. He snags the towel on the way out the bathroom door, and slides into the kitchen.

There's not a _lot_ of smoke coming from the oven, but there's enough that it set off the shrill beep, and Todd is already resigned when he pulls the blackened pie out and sets it on the stove top.

"I should have seen this coming," he says, staring at the ruined pie. There's a puddle developing on the floor, and a glob of suds lands wetly by his feet. He presses his lips together for one long moment, willing the smoke detector to stop shrieking, and then sighs and turns to grab a cookie sheet to fan it away.

* * *

Dirk has three sticky notes lined up on the counter. One has the ingredients for the dry rub, the next has the temperature he needs to set the oven to, and the last has the time it needs to bake for.

"I cross referenced it with three different recipe websites," he tells Hobbs, phone tucked between his ear and shoulder. "I got a fairly large turkey, given that there will only be three of us, but none of us have ever complained about leftovers. There's a time-to-weight equation, and I triple-checked it."

"Just make sure you check the temperature before you pull it out," Hobbs says, with the wisdom of his years. "You can do the dang math all you want, but nothing beats proof."

"I got a thermometer just for this," Dirk promises. "There will be no over-cooked, dry turkey at _my_ Thanksgiving table."

"I believe in you, Dirk," Hobbs says, and Dirk beams in his reflection in the kitchen window. That feels nice to hear.

* * *

"No, no, no," Farah chants, when the timer on her phone goes off. She's got one hand rapidly whisking a saucepot full of gravy, one hand stirring the green beans over high heat, and now the potatoes are ready to come out of the oven. "Not yet, not yet!"

She opts to drop the whisk and spatula to grab the oven mitts and pull the potatoes out of the oven, but they seem raw when she gives them a poke. By the time she's turned them over and shoved them back into the oven, the green beans have scorched and the gravy has turned to glue.

"This can't be happening," Farah moans. She turns off both burners and buries her face in her hands. "Think. It's going to be fine. You can fix this. You haven't ruined everything."

That, of course, is when the smoke detector goes off.

* * *

They've planned to eat in Dirk's apartment. Farah's is a bit bigger, but she doesn't really do visitors, and Todd is still in his fairly-trashed studio. So Dirk lugs a folding table up to the third floor, and borrows chairs from two different neighbors who are going out of town for the holiday. He also focuses on holiday décor.

"Wow," Todd says, stopping just inside Dirk's front door. "That's a… lot of napkins."

"I watched more than forty minutes of tutorials," Dirk says, hovering somewhere between proud and sheepish. "It seemed like a waste to only fold three of them into fun shapes."

"No yeah, it's good," Todd assures him, finally moving further into the apartment. "I wasn't expecting that many paper turkeys, but like, it's great. Festive."

"Festive is what I was aiming for!"

"You've certainly succeeded," Todd says. The way the turkeys are positioned means that they're staring at anyone who steps into the room, and it's more than slightly unsettling, but then again, life with Dirk is more than slightly unsettling. So it works out. "Listen," he says. "I had a bit of a – a mishap with the, uh, with the pie."

"Oh?" Dirk says, deeply interested, but than –

"Jesus," says Farah, stopping dead at the sight of the origami flock of napkin-turkeys. "Dirk, what – what did you do?"

"I decorated," he says indignantly.

"It’s terrifying," she responds, and Todd laughs in surprise.

"Well, I suppose you don't need a napkin, then," Dirk says, and snatches it off her plate. Of course, she just grabs one of the dozens he has lined up on the shelves, coffee table, and kitchen counter, and drops it back onto her plate. Dirk hisses at her.

* * *

"Should we, uh, pray?" Todd asks. They're all well into their respective second beers by the time they sit down at the table, and he feels warm and content. "Like, that's a thing, right?"

"I don't really do that," Dirk says, as delicate as he gets, and Farah shakes her head in agreement.

"Yeah, that's not my thing, either. I didn't know it was your thing?"

"It's not," Todd hastens to assure them. "I just didn't know if, like, that was part of your Thanksgiving traditions. I didn't want to skip it, if it was."

"The only tradition I had for Thanksgiving was watching football with my dad and my brother," Farah says, and shrugs. "And that hasn't been a thing in a while, obviously."

Dirk grimaces and pats her gingerly on the shoulder. "Er – there, there."

"It's – I'm fine, Dirk. Thanks. What about you?"

"This is my first real Thanksgiving," Dirk says. "I spent a few in a food kitchen in Chicago, and one year serving food at a queer community center in Philadelphia, but it was mostly just exciting to have more food that day. Food banks get more donations around the holiday season," he explains. "And they have more hot meals."

"Oh," Farah says, and she and Todd exchange panicked eye contact. "That's, um – "

"Sorry, Dirk," Todd says, taking over. "I know that the last few years really sucked. I'm sorry that included being, um, being hungry."

"Oh, that's alright," Dirk says, largely unconcerned. "It's nicer now that I have friends to eat with. I'm told that's the whole point!"

"It is," Todd agrees. "I used to do it with Amanda and my parents, and it's always nice to just sit with people you love, and eat good food."

Let's eat the food then!" Dirk says.

Todd and Farah both grimace.

"Well," Farah says. "I don't have. Um. Anything that I'd classify as particularly edible? I kind of screwed up the gravy and the green beans, and the potatoes, well…" she trails off and looks briefly down. "They don't taste, um. Right."

"Damn," Dirk says. "I’m sorry to hear that. At least we have my turkey and a dessert, though!"

"Not quite," Todd says. "I, uh, I kind of murdered the pie. I didn't hear my timer go off and I – it – uh. It kind of caught fire?" Farah and Dirk both stare at him, eyes wide, and he holds his hands up in defense. "It wasn't a very big fire! The oven was fine!"

Farah rubs her face and Dirk shakes his head pityingly. "See how the Americans fail at observing their own holiday," he says, pushing his chair back and standing up. "And how the heroic Brit comes to the rescue." He ducks into the kitchen for a long moment, and there's a brief scraping noise, and then a bang. Then there's a clatter, another scraping noise, and Dirk says, "shit." Then they hear the trashcan lid slam open, and there's a wet and heavy 'thunk'.

"…Dirk?"

There's a long pause, and then Dirk pokes his head out of the kitchen. "Did you know," he says brightly, "that kilograms and pounds are not the same thing?"

"Yes," Todd and Farah chorus, with varying levels of scorn and disbelief.

"Ah!" Dirk says. "I did _not_ know that. It turns out that I calibrated by roasting time based on the assumption that they were roughly analogous."

"Didn't I get you a cooking thermometer?" Farah asks, brow furrowed.

"Ah, right. Yes," Dirk says. "You see, I may have _also_ been operating under the assumption that I was reading the temperature in Celsius, and not in Fahrenheit?"

Todd narrows his eyes. "Dirk. Is that turkey raw?"

Dirk giggles, slightly hysterically.

* * *

"This was a much better plan," Todd says, head tilted back and feet propped on Dirk's coffee table. There's a half-empty container of moo goo gai pan abandoned next to his third beer, and he has both hands laced across his stomach. Dirk makes an agreeing noise, flopped on the floor to the right of the couch. His lo mein carton is completely cleaned out, and he's filled it with the rolled-up wrappers from their chopsticks, as well as the greasy corpses of all of the napkin turkeys they'd used.

"I _can_ cook," Farah says from the other side of the couch. "This should have been fine. We shouldn't have needed to get take-out." It's her fourth time saying the same thing, but it's largely just repetition at this point.

"Hey, it's cool, it's fine," Todd says soothingly. "We can all cook. Well, Dirk can kind of cook. But you've made dinner for us before, and so have I. We just psyched ourselves out."

"That's a stupid thing to do," Farah says, but she sounds on her way to grudging acceptance.

"I mean, sure." Todd shrugs. "I think we all just, like, tried too hard to make a meal that wasn't us."

"I just wanted you guys to have a good Thanksgiving," Dirk admits. "I know this is the first year that both of you are away from your families, and I read up on the importance of a traditional meal. I'm sorry I almost served us raw poultry." He grimaces. "I hope neither of you regrets staying here with me."

Todd struggles up on his elbows to peer over the side of the couch at Dirk. "Hey, hey. It's fine," he says. "I'd _way_ rather be here than staying the night in my high school bedroom, and awkwardly trying to pretend with my parents that I didn't, like, completely fuck up our relationship. That would totally suck."

"And I don't want to go home to my brother," Farah says firmly. She doesn't move to look down at Dirk, but he feels seen nonetheless. "They don't actually like who I am, and I'm tired of pretending for them."

"Besides, Dirk," Todd says, meeting his gaze and smiling. There's a crinkle at the corner of his eye that makes Dirk's stomach go weird. "You _are_ our family. That means this is exactly where we’re supposed to be."

Farah nods emphatically, and Dirk squeaks and lets his head thump on the carpet.

"Wow," he says. "I think I might like this holiday?"

"Good," Todd says, satisfied, and flops back into the couch. "Happy Thanksgiving, guys."


End file.
